That’d work.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Griffin studied the squat gray building just fifty yards away, checked the road, then, seeing no headlights, left cover and jogged leisurely toward the shop. He had no preconceived plan; it all depended on what he found. Freeform. The thing would dictate its own course.
He went right to the front door, twisted the knob, and went in; knelt, unlaced his boots, stepped out of them, and did a fast walk-through in his socks. The square cement-block building was divided roughly into three rooms. In front, the office took up a partitioned corner and contained a desk and shelves with this open alcove at one end with a bunk and an exposed toilet.
The office door opened into a machine shop area with a steel lathe, milling machine, metal saw, grinders, and a drill press.
The second room was the garage. A disassembled rust orange tractor was raised up on blocks and bottle jacks. A tall tool caddy on casters was positioned next to the tractor; lots of drawers, with a workbench on top. Looking around, he saw a wire-feed Mig welder, welding tanks, an air compressor, and a big Onan diesel generator. Gaskets hung on the wall next to a Halon fire extinguisher. Lots of wood blocks, a few jack stands. What you’d expect to find in a mechanic’s shop.
Griffin briefly inspected the partitioned storeroom between the garage and the paint room. It contained a paint gun, two protective suits with breather masks connected to filter packs, and buckets of paint. Last, he walked through the paint room. The walls and floor and ceiling were rainbow-mottled with spray from the paint gun, as was the sink and a long worktable with a wide elaborate fume hood that he assumed led up to the blower exhaust fan on the roof.
He walked up to a small color snapshot taped over the workbench: palm trees, a sand beach, sea blue water, and surf that looked like ocean. He shrugged and walked back through the shop into the office, taking his time now. He noticed two things. There was a pile of rags under the desk and two bowls; one with a residue of milk, the other with cat chow.
And on the desk, a blue-green pamphlet caught his eye, lying on top of a pile of tractor magazines.
He put down the brochure. Nothing in the shop struck him out of the ordinary; the paint room
Griffin put his boots back on and walked to the barn.
The hayloft was vacant, so Griffin went to the lower level and pulled open the tall, stout sliding doors. The basement floor was walled in two broad stalls; the one on the right was obviously used as a parking garage for Gator’s truck and was empty except for a battery charger and plastic gallons of wiper fluid and antifreeze.
The other stall looked more promising. He searched inside the door jam, found an electrical box, and flipped the switch. A chain of four overhead bulbs came on, illuminating a long interior space. A working tractor with a snow bucket and the Bobcat were parked alongside a huge white oblong tank on wheels. “Anhydrous” printed in blue on the side. Stacks of yellow bags; rock salt. A bank of chest-high feed bins made of heavy three-quarter-inch ply lined the entire length of the partition to the right.
The long basement abutted cattle pens and a lean-to that was open to the fenced pasture. He saw half a dozen heavy green plastic fifty-five-gallon drums arranged in the corner of one of the pens. Inspecting the drums, he found them empty and clean-smelling, like they’d been scrubbed with disinfectant.
Griffin was running out of places for Gator to hide things. Briefly he considered digging through the tangled tractor graveyard in back of the shop. Then his eyes settled on the row of plywood bins. He walked over and lifted one of the lids. Immediately he stepped back, making a face at the stench. It was heaped with blackened smutty feed corn, garnished with a jumbo decomposing rat sprawled next to green poison pellets. He went down the line, opening the lids. Five in all; another corn, a barley, two oats, all of them years gone to mildew and rot. A remnant of the hobby farm that had been here.
Griffin thought about it.
The rest of the place was so shipshape. Why would he have these bins full of rotten feed? Decided to give the bins a closer look. He rapped his knuckle on the side panel; a solid thump. Moved his hand down a foot. This time when he struck the wood with his fist, he got a hollow-sounding bounce.
Well, well.
After fiddling with the plywood, he determined that the bins had been constructed with lift-out front panels; the wood screws that appeared to pin them in place had been trimmed back, didn’t go through. Cosmetic.
Grunting with the effort, he forced the tightly fit panel up and revealed a compartment beneath the false feed tray. It contained a tall cardboard box. He removed the box, opened the flaps. Three round-bottomed glass flasks and a long twin-tubed glass apparatus were carefully packed in wadded newspaper. Tubing, stoppers, and clamps were tucked in crevices between the flasks.
Gator’s little home chemistry set. Okay.
Griffin stood up and looked down the row of bins. He didn’t have time to open all five bins. After carefully repacking the box, he put it back in the compartment and forced the panel in place. Then he went to the last bin and swiftly wedged open the front panel. This compartment contained a stash of over-the-counter chemicals, just like he’d read about in his Internet search. Stacked gallon cans of camping fuel, toluene, and paint thinner. A tightly packed box of lithium batteries, cans of Red Devil lye drain opener. A row of red Iso Heet plastic bottles. And a bottle of ether.
Talk about fire in the hole.
Griffin surveyed the basement. Now the yellow bags of rock salt piled along the wall behind the anhydrous tank didn’t look so innocent.
Looking up at the series of overhead lightbulbs, he suddenly smiled. The old cartoonist in him suddenly frolicked in the image.
Maybe just skip a step, leave Keith out of it. Besides, Keith probably wouldn’t really appreciate the concept of Gator’s karma working itself out, so to speak. It had the added elegance of poetic justice. Seeing’s how Gator made his Robin Hood reputation blowing up a meth lab.
Griffin vaulted up on the bin and unscrewed the lightbulb over the last bin, tossing it in his palms, hot potato, until it cooled; then he inspected it. Like he thought, a lightweight commercial bulb. He screwed it back in, jumped down, and hurried to the door and switched off the light. He needed a rough-service bulb with a more durable filament.
Then he slipped out the door and checked the road for headlights. Seeing none, he walked back into the pines and melted into the murky forest. Touchy going in the shadowy trees, jogging his way back along his tracks; but he immensely enjoyed every step of the trek back to his Jeep. Doubly enjoyed it because he knew he was coming back.
When it was really dark.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, Griffin was back home in his own modest garage workshop, taking three items from a bag he’d just purchased at Tindall’s hardware in town; a package of heavy-duty lightbulbs, a sixty- milliliter vet’s syringe, and a can of starter fluid.
Griffin opened the bulbs, selected one, placed the metal-threaded nob in his bench vise, and carefully tightened the jaws until the nob was secure. Then he took an electric hand drill, inserted a one-eighth-inch bit, and bored a hole in the metal thread. He repeated the procedure with a second bulb. Two should be enough.
Then he looked around for something to carry the fluid in, that would be easily accessible to the long syringe needle. He settled on a soup-bowl-sized Tupperware container filled with woodscrews, dumped out the screws,
